Society of Authors

In my desire to find organisations that don’t want to have me as a member, I have joined the Society of Authors (and thereby fell at the first hurdle on this occasion).

Last week I went to a local meetup of the East Midlands branch. There were 9 of us which was a good number of people for me to forget the names of. I succeeded.

What was really interesting was the diverse nature of the writers. I was especially taken by a couple of the subjects even though they’re ‘not my bag’ as the kids of yesteryear would have said.

I felt a got a lot from the meeting; it was good to find new people and hear about their writing work. I am looking forward to the next session.

Fosseway Writers

Yesterday evening I toddled along to Newark -Notts – to meet/sit in on a session of the Fosseway Writers. This wasn’t completely out of the blue (I met Nick of the Fosseway Writers at last year’s Newark Book Festival and learned a little about the group there) but, because of commitments in my world, I haven’t been able to make their meetings… until last night.

The evening’s conversation was largely about a multi-handed project where a number of the group are writing an ensemble piece. Does this make it an ensemble-ensemble piece?

Anyway.

I liked the group and I enjoyed the way the participants considered such things as relationships and characters/character development, as well as considering how characters look/might look through the eyes of other characters in the ensemble, as well as through the eyes of other writers/contributors.

I’m making this sound much more complicated than the conversation was (the sign of a good meeting: the conversation wasn’t ever stilted and flowed around topics) and that’s largely to the credit of those present, and also attributable to me being a rubbish explaining device.

I was slightly disappointed to learn that Nick is in the middle of moving to France which, obviously, will mean his attendance will wind up at some point. Que sera sera. However I liked the group as a collective, and enjoyed the detailed thinking and the level of enthusiasm for the WIP.

If you’re in the area and you have a leaning towards writing prose or poetry (or both!), I strongly recommend you find a space in your weekly diary for the Fosseway Writers.

By the way, if you haven’t experienced the “Let’s xcape Café” (and I hadn’t previously), please go along and have a look. It’s a wonderful table-top gaming café that sells cakes and books!

Happy New Year!

After what seems like a decade or two, 2024 is finally behind us. I’m not wishing time away, but there was a spell back there when I thought 2025 would never arrive!

And now it’s here in all its glory, what shall we do with it? Well, I can only speak for me, obviously, but if you want to let me know what you’ve got in mind for 2025, feel free to drop me a lime line or comment below. In the meantime I’ll give you a little look at what I’ve got in the 2025 plan:

  • Two new audiobooks
  • Publication of book 4 in the Tempest series (title to be revealed shortly)
  • I got a new jumper – and a cardigan – for Christmas
  • And a big box of Sports Mix, and finally
  • Excerpts of the new book I’m working on will be released

That’s a few things to be going on with, eh?

For librarians

Another blogpost expanded from a thread I posted on Bluesky (@brennigjones.com)

On Thursday I went into my local library (I go in every Thursday). This time, instead of looking to take a book out, I took in my three (so far) published books. I explained they’d been reprinted and had new covers. I said that as the library service is underfunded, I wished to donate these updated books.

The librarian checked, said they had the first print of the books, though only one was on the shelves at the moment. She accepted the donation and asked what I wanted to do with the other copies. I said the library could do whatever they wanted.

She said as the books were popular with readers, could she put them out to other libraries? I said yes of course. I showed her the dedication in Storm (“For librarians everywhere, because they know”). She laughed and took a photograph of it.

Libraries are great places. Please use them, they need our patronage as much as we need them to be there.

Reader engagement

This blogpost is an expanded piece drawn from a thread I posted on Bluesky (@brennigjones.com)

English writer (though latterly he lived in Arizona) Adam Hall had tremendous success with a series of gritty, fast-paced cold-war spy novels. They featured an antihero named Quiller and usually featured that name somewhere in the title.

The BBC even made a Quiller television series (not as good as the books, obviously). Adam’s second real name (it’s a long story) was Elleston Trevor.

Under his second real name of Elleston Trevor he wrote a book called Flight Of The Phoenix, published in 1964. The novel did moderately well in book sales but Hollywood picked it up and made it into a film with an outstanding cast. The film was remade (didn’t need it!) in 2004.

I was a fan of the Quiller books. Bought then all, read each one several times. The author’s style captivated (and captured) me and as I was, at that time, something of a cold war warrior myself, I felt the books gave me some sort of a grounding.

In the early 1980s Adam/Elleston and I began corresponding. It started when I wrote to him asking how he researched European scenes given he rarely left the US (it was well-publicised at the time).

His wife, Jonquil, wrote back and we struck up a friendly relationship via snailmail (because email hadn’t yet been invented). Soon we had a three-way correspondence going between Jonquil, Adam/Elleston and me. That continued until his wife’s passing in the mid 1980s.

In our letters he taught me a great deal about how he felt about writing, how he dealt with writing, and how he structured his WsIP. He was a terrific person (you get a feel for that quicker through letters than email), always thoughtful and thought-provoking and helpful (to someone who had aspirations to write but didn’t know how to begin).

Last summer we went to Hay-on-Wye. We visited various bookshops (it’s the law) and I couldn’t resist the best of them all: The Old Cinema. Nestled away in a corner on the 2nd floor I found two Adam Hall/Quiller books which, obviously, I bought even though I’d read them both dozens of times.

When I got back to the caravan (yes, you heard), I opened the first book and out dropped an A5-sized piece of paper. It was a typed (ask your parents, kids) letter on Daily Telegraph headed paper. The letter was from the Literary Editor of the Telegraph and was addressed to a book reviewer. It asked him to turn around a review of the Quiller book I was holding!

I felt as if I’d discovered something of significant historical value in an ‘Indiana Jones does books’, kind of way. Now, a year later, I still feel like this.

Anyway, to my point. Adam/Elleston didn’t need to write back to me. He could have ignored my letter. But he didn’t. He was a nice man and (in my view) a cracking and (in the world’s view) a very successful writer of over a hundred books.

Cold War novels are anachronistic, but his style of writing is well worth revisiting. If you have aspirations to write gripping, edgy tales, I’d suggest you try to find his work. As examples of how breaking writing rules can achieve great results, the Quiller books are first class.

I’m not going anywhere else with this, I’m just telling you about a guy who wrote over a hundred books, and about the letters we wrote to each other, and about an author’s engagement with someone who wrote him a letter.

Well, it’s been quiet…

You know those days when you’ve been so busy that, when you get to the quiet time, you’ve been so hectic you can’t actually recall everything you’ve done? I’ve had a couple of months like that. In moments of insomnia I’ve been jotting a few notes down, to try and buttonhole a few memories of things and it seems to be working as an aide-mémoire.

One of the things I’ve done – a dull, boring, but handy tech thing – is to set up a newsletter on this here website. I’m going to use it to generate four newsletters a year. I’m going to use the content from a few of those insomniac buttonholes, and I’ll add in some current stuff and maybe a spoiler or two several. Folk who know me well can testify that I don’t like handing out spoilers, I prefer readers to come across them within context of the piece they’re reading, so I’ll do some mental gymnastics to allow me to trail some snippets. If you’re interested in joining the newsletter gang, you can sign up right here (and you can leave the newsletter anytime you want).

I’ll tell you about a few more things in the newsletter which begs the question, what is the relationship between the newsletter and this blog? And the answer to that, my friend, is whatever relationship we want it to be 🙂

Tempest series video!

I know, I know and yes, I know. The whole idea of using a video trailer to get people to notice books does seem a little odd. But wait a minute. How else do you (OK, I) convey to a potential reader the excitement and action that reading a series of three books will unlock in that potential reader’s head?

How do I tell them about the people and their stresses, strains, and overwhelming joys?

Well, I think using a video to capture a few images is a good place to start. Judge for yourself:

More places to buy my books!

Some people don’t like to use Amazon, preferring to patronise a physical bookshop instead. And who can blame them? I love walking in to a local bookshop and seeing ranks of books just waiting for me to browse through. Sometimes I’ll make impulse purchases, sometimes I’ll set books aside and sample a chapter or two, and build a little stack of books that I’m going to bring home with me.

There are a few really good independent bookshops in Nottingham (the nearest big city to this tiny village). I love the different flavours of each of the independents. You know what I mean when I say ‘different flavours’, yes? You do? Good.

Waterstones is a fish in a different kind of a kettle. Floor upon floor upon floor of books and books and books. Comfortable chairs to sit in while I’m sampling chapters and building my stacks. It feels more like a kind of a library than a bookshop and I can’t quite put my finger on why but that’s how it is. By the way, I was in my local library today and someone I knew took me over to a row of books in a rack and showed me Tempest!

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.

I’ve been doing a lot of pushing and pulling and heaving and a little bit of bumping and the end result is that my books are now available in High Street bookstores. Particularly Waterstones (but other bookstores are available, right?).

As soon as I can (but I’ll give it a few weeks because I don’t want to appear too needy), I’ll go in to the Nottingham branch of Waterstones and ask to speak to the manager/ess. Then I’ll ask if my books could be featured in the Local Author section. And maybe we could do a book-signing or something?

Well… we’ll see what they say to that.

Trailer!

It has been suggested that I might like to have a trailer (like a film/TV trailer) made for Tempest, Storm, Hurricane (or all three). Well that’s appealing and goes straight to my vanity funny bone. Because it would be great to have a hard-hitting, hooky/eye-catching, explosive (lit and fig), quick cuts away, dark, mysterious, brooding, threatening, perilous, shady, bullet-infested trailer for Tempest, Storm, Hurricane (or all three).

So I looked on the website of the company who was recommended to me and there are a few examples of their work, videos of different length. I watched one.

Yep, it was exactly the kind of eye-catching, explosive (lit and fig), quick cuts away (etc, etc) trailer that had instantly popped into my mind. I watched another.

It too was exactly the kind of eye-catching, explosive (lit and fig), quick cuts away (etc, etc) trailer that had instantly popped into my mind.

The first one… there was a bit of shade over a stand-out piece of text. And there was a misplaced apostrophe on another piece of stand-out text. So, hummm.

The second one… I couldn’t see any issues with that. Except for the length. 1m 17s is an odd length – and slightly long? Or is that just me?

If I went down this road (and that’s a big, big if!) trailer length would have to be thought out carefully. Mainstream broadcast media commercials are usually 30 seconds, but MSM book/film trailers can be minutes long.

I think the trailer length would limit the subject to just one book. Tempest (as the first in the series) would be the obvious choice. There’s a lot of material in Tempest which could sampled. And then what, when it’s done?

Stick it on my (little used) channel on YouTube? And TikTok? And Insta? And FB? And then boost the trailer through paid inserts/adverts?

Hmm.

Anyway, the jury is out on this idea. I mean, I really love the idea, but I’m not sure it’s for me.